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<title>Maybe I Shouldn’t Have by CherriesJubilee (Cherries_Jubilee)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742085">Maybe I Shouldn’t Have</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherries_Jubilee/pseuds/CherriesJubilee'>CherriesJubilee (Cherries_Jubilee)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Overwatch (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Best Friends, Betrayal, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Recall, Revenge, Talon Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:48:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,234</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23742085</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cherries_Jubilee/pseuds/CherriesJubilee</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse was desperate, but he should have known better. He knew Ashe was desperate to rebuild their family, and he knew that it would destroy her. But he did it anyway.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe &amp; Jesse McCree</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maybe I Shouldn’t Have</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Jesse panted, trying time stand back up. Blood dribbled across his hands from where he’d been grazed by a bullet. He looked up to be met with Ashe’s angry stare and the barrel of the Viper.</p><p>“Been a while.” She sneered. Jesse sighed, and raised his hands in surrender.</p><p>“You got nerve, showin’ your face back here. Gimme one good reason I shouldn’t put a bullet in you.” Ashe drawled.</p><p>He needed an excuse, a way out. Jesse knew what drove Ashe to do literally anything. “I want back in.”</p><p>She laughed coldly, cocking her rifle. “You know what happens to traitors, McCree.”</p><p>“I want my family back, please Lizzie.”</p><p>In an instant, her glare softened, and she lowered her gun a bit. It killed Jesse to do it, but he had to get her to stand down so he could get out of here. She scoffed, and tossed aside her gun.</p><p>“Do—Do you know how much I kept on wishin’ for you t’ come back? All the stupid things I did tryin’ to get my best friend back? All for you to-to just <em>show up</em> and say you want back in!” She wiped her eye, to prevent unspilled tears from showing her vulnerability. “I thought you were dead!” Ashe yelled.</p><p>She sat down next to him. “All I’d heard from you in years was through that story on the news about the end of Overwatch. You couldn’t even bother to call or anything just once?”</p><p>Jesse sighed. “Sorry.”</p><p>He knew that he had her where he wanted her. She was at her most vulnerable. Ashe pointed at his cybernetic. “How’d you get that?”</p><p>He chuckled. “Long story.”</p><p>“Paraphrase.”</p><p>“I was bounty huntin’ some arsonist. Son of a bitch set me on fire. What about that? That’s new.” Jesse gestured to Ashe’s own cybernetic, partially covering her arm.</p><p>“Job gone wrong. Got my arm cut up. Nerve damage was so bad I had to start wearin’ the gauntlet.”</p><p>“It looks badass.” He joked. Ashe burst out laughing. “Yours too.” She said.</p><p>She sighed and settled against a wall. “I missed you, Jesse.”</p><p>It felt like a knife to his heart. He was lying to her, giving her false hope. “I missed you, too, Lizzie.” The nickname felt like ice in his throat. “And I’m sorry.”</p><p>Jesse grabbed the sleep dart Ana had given him before the fall of Overwatch. He plunged it into Ashe’s arm. Her eyes flashed rage and betrayal. She slumped down beside him. When he turned her over to the authorities and took his reward, he’d never felt so low. Emotional manipulation had never been his strong suit, but he just knew Ashe so well.</p><p>The reward money felt dirty, like it was wrong to use it. Not that he didn’t, he had to survive, but it was money won off the back of betraying his closest friend. She was so willing to take him back in a heartbeat, to restore something long gone. Maybe Jesse should have gone back in the first place.</p><hr/><p>When Liz came to in the back of a transport, she remembered exactly what happened. That damn McCree. She’d gone and reminisced about the past, and he stabbed her with a sleep dart. Stupid.</p><p>After she was done beating herself up, she knew she needed an exit plan. Liz activated the comm hidden in her gauntlet. “Bob,” she muttered, low enough the guard couldn’t hear. “I need you t’ do somethin’.”</p><hr/><p>Almost the instant she got back, the entirety of the Deadlock Rebels could tell something was up. Her whole demeanor was colder, and she became distant. Most of all, she made a call the minute she got up to her desk.</p><p>“Hey, Akande? I’ll hear whatever deal you got.”</p><p>Ashe was opposed to Talon before, but whatever had happened had completely changed her entire attitude towards them. She started going with them, on missions and assassinations. After Overwatch started to reappear, her hours lengthened.</p><p>The incident happened on an assassination attempt. Widowmaker was out of commission, since she’d gotten herself shot. When Akande approached Ashe for her sharp shooting, she replied with, “Just tell me where to shoot.”</p><p>“Wonderful, Miss Ashe, but be warned, there will be Overwatch operatives present.”</p><p>She grinned wickedly. “Even better.”</p><p>Her target was a philanthropist, who was incredibly supportive of Overwatch. Take him down, Overwatch lost their only source of funding.</p><p>Ashe positioned herself above the banquet he was attending. Through her scope, she scanned for her target. Her gaze landed upon a peculiarly dressed man. A cowboy.</p><p>It was too perfect, if she could eliminate her target, then she would be free to take care of McCree. The target came first, since he had body guards, but if she could take her revenge against McCree, it would be even sweeter.</p><p>Ashe lined up her shot, and without hesitation, fired on her target. He fell to the ground. Immediately she swiveled over to McCree. He spotted her, face falling as he recognized her.</p><p>McCree knew Ashe. He knew she wouldn’t shoot. She hadn’t last time. But then, he hadn’t betrayed her again last time.</p><p>There was a searing pain in his abdomen. She’d really done it. Ashe had shot him. He heard her gunshots ringing all around him as he scrambled away from her range.</p><p>It felt like he’d been stabbed with a white hot poker in the back of his left shin, and he fell to the ground. She’d gotten him again. McCree commed back to headquarters. “I’m shot, I think this is it for me.”</p><p>The crowd had fled by now, it was just him and Ashe. She hopped down from her spot, stalking towards him. “Well, isn’t this just poetic?” She drawled. “I was stupid to not put a bullet in your head before. But now, I think I have a better use for than gettin’ my revenge.”</p><p>Ashe snapped a pair of handcuffs around his wrists, before clicking a button on her headset. “I’ve got Overwatch Operative McCree here. Requesting transport.”</p><p>Her earpiece crackled back. “Sending transport time your current location.”</p><p>She smirked down at McCree. “Please, Lizzie, don’t do this,” he strained.</p><p>At the mention of her old nickname, she put pressure onto his wounded leg. McCree groaned in pain. “You don’t get to call me that anymore, McCree. I call the shots now, got it?”</p><p>The transport arrived, and McCree was loaded onto a gurney. Someone injected him with something, and he became drowsy, eventually going unconscious. When he came to, he was strapped down in a laboratory. His cybernetic was gone, and he was all alone. Almost.</p><p>Ashe sat in a chair across the room from him, arms folded, a proud smirk on her face. “Why would you join up with Talon?” McCree yelled at her.</p><p>She grinned. “Oh McCree,” she purred, “I have you to thank for all this. If it weren’t for you turnin’ me in for that reward money, I would never have reconsidered with Talon.”</p><p>The air felt like it had been sucked from him. He pushed her to join with Talon. And now, he’d been captured. “You’re real petty, y’know that?” He growled.</p><p>She stood up, towering over him. “I know.”</p><p>Ashe walked out of the lab, leaving Jesse in silence. His future was in the hands of a terrorist organization that hated him. This was just great.</p>
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